Die Selbstmörder

Die Selbstmörder ("The Suicide") is the German title of a 1928 play by Soviet dramatist and screenwriter Nikolai R. Erdman [1] (1900-1970).

The original text

Sergey Zhenovach's staging of Nikolai Erdman's banned Soviet-era comedy centres around a young, unemployed man desperate enough to contemplate ending it all. This production was captured by Stage Russia HD at The Theatre Art Studio in Moscow. The play, originally written in 1928 and unproduced until 1990, forms a link in Russian literary history between the satirical mastery of Nikolai Gogol and the post-World War II Theatre of the Absurd.

A comedy about a young, unemployed man desperate enough to contemplate ending it all.

Written in 1928, staging of Nikolai Erdman's banned Soviet-era

This production was captured by Stage Russia HD

Sergey Zhenovach directed the original Russian text at The Theatre Art Studio in the Russian text was shcheduled for performance in the Wachtangow Theatre in Moscow, under the direction of Meyerhold, but censorship prevented it from happening.

It eventually had its premiere (in the German version) in 1969, staged in Göteborg, Sweden, followed by a production in Switzerland.

Translations and adaptations

Made into a TV film in 1971, directed by August Everding, the German translation by Ingeborg Gampert.[2]

Translated into Afrikaans from the German (Die Selbstmörder) by André P. Brink, entitled Die Selfmoordenaar (1973).

Translated as into English as The Suicide by Peter Tegel and premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford, on June 13, 1979.